Supervising Minister of Information, Dr. Nurudeen Muhammed; Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Bala Muhammed; Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen; and Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Stephen Oru, briefed State House correspondents at the end of the meeting presided over by President Namadi Sambo.
Muhammed said there are budgetary provisions of N11billion in the ministry’s 2014 Appropriation and N10billion from SURE-P for the projects, while the balance would be provided for in subsequent budgets.
He said, “Council noted with delight that this is a major push in consolidating and implementing National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan in the road sector.
“It further observed that the projects will have salutary effect on the economic and social life of Nigerians along these corridors across 14 states.
“Accordingly, council approved the award of contract for the construction and rehabilitation of 17 No. Roads and Bridges
(Categories A and B) in the 1st batch of roads and bridges projects contained in the ministry’s 2014 budget implementation in the total sum of N430.56billion.”
Onolememen explained that the roads and bridges which cut across 14 states of the federation were meant to enhance the ongoing transformation of the road sector, catalyse economic activities and bring about positive social change in different parts of Nigeria.
Answering a question on why the government would be awarding such huge amounts of contracts at a time there is drop in oil price, the minister said the nation was not broke.
He said it would be wrong for the administration to stop funding infrastructure because of drop in price oil.
He said, “In terms of falling oil prices like you said, that is a global phenomenon and Nigeria is not broke, despite the fact that oil prices are falling, we have not reached a stage that Nigeria cannot continue to fund infrastructure projects in our country.
“Infrastructure projects themselves help to catalyse economic growth because people must be busy, there are Nigerians who would be engaged to do these jobs and all that.
“Over 13,600 jobs will be created from this project that will last for up to a period of about five years, this will get them busy and put food on their table.”
Breakdown of the projects costs and the benefitting states are as follows: Rivers (N1206billion); Bayelsa (N26.4billion); Delta (N64.8billion); Delta (N47.9billion); Enugu (N32.3billion); Abia and Rivers (N34billion) and Ogun (N100billion).
Others are Niger (N17.5billion); Bridge in Cross River (N6.5billion);
Yobe and Borno (N8.1billion); Kaduna and Zamfara (N15.6billion); Nassarawa (N14.2billion); Benue (N9.9billion); Kogi (N7.4billion); Gombe (N7.2billion); Cross River (N7billion) and Cross River (N9billion).
According to the minister, some of the projects include the Bodo-Bonny Road in Rivers State with 3 major bridges across Afa Creek, Opobo Channel and Nanabie Creek; the new Ikom Bridge in Cross Rivers State; the Agae-Katchia-Baro Road and the Ikorodu-Shagamu Road linking the NNPC Depot at Mosinmi in Ogun State.
Others include the reconstruction and dualisation of Aba-Port Harcourt and Enugu-Lokpanta sections of the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway; as well as the rehabilitation of Damaturu-Biu Road and Gombe-Kaltungo Section of Gombe-Numan-Yola Road.
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